Although I have lived in the U.S. all my life, one of the remnants of my "Latina-ness" is my very relaxed attitude about time. Interestingly, this is only in my personal life. In my business life, where I am much more "gringa," I have learned all kinds of tips and tricks to fight it. I out and out lie to myself about how much time it takes to get places, giving myself what looks like a ridiculously excessive amount to get to things like job interviews, only to find (shockingly) that it gets me there with only 10 minutes to spare. I set multiple reminders for meetings, sometimes on both my Outlook and my phone.

I have learned, the hard way, that gringos have very little sense of humor about tardiness. Bafflingly, they seem to consider it some kind of moral failure to be late. After a lifetime of living and working with the blanquitos,  they still sometimes give me cause to shake my head in wonder.

It can be terrifying to be a mother in a world that feels this dangerous for kids.  Last week I saw the old, familiar face of Etan Patz all over the TV. He was the first kid ever featured on a milk carton and he disappeared on his way to school when he was just 7 years old. I was a little kid then, around his age, and I remember the horror of the adults around me when they realized that a stranger can grab your kid right off the street.

I was reminded again when I saw the picture of little Isabel Mercedes Celis, presumably snatched from her own bed overnight just last week.

It is the American story: people come here with ambitions and plans, ready to work and struggle for a better life. They start families, build lives, put down roots, but live a split kind of existence, with a part of their heart with the land and the people they left behind. Once they have kids, they wonder how they will keep the family together even though they are thousands of miles apart.

I was a child of such a family. It was always just my parents and I here in the U.S., isolated from the extended family they left behind in Argentina. As often as they could scrape together the money, they loved to call back home. Inevitably, attention turned to me.